


Circle

by thedevilchicken



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 07:41:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11985300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: All roads lead to Scarif.





	Circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



In the start, she didn't remember till it was way too late. 

In the start, everything seemed normal - well, as normal as it can get when you've decided to fight the Galactic Empire with only a team of guys who don't even really fit in in the Rebellion, let alone anywhere else. There was a creeping sense of déjà vu, but that was as far as it went till the end and then she looked at Cassian and she _knew_ it was the end. She didn't know because she saw it coming; she knew because she'd already seen it come. She knew because she'd lived that day before. She still doesn't know how many times. 

Once she realised what was happening, she tried to change the ending. Back then, it was only near the end that she realised, so that made sense - she tried to head for the nearest ship, and sometimes she dragged Cassian along and sometimes she didn't, those times when she'd got herself injured and so she knew she couldn't support his weight once she'd knocked him out, because she also knew he wouldn't go willingly. She'd tried. She _knew_ he wouldn't go willingly, in spite of everything she said or did. Cassian had made his choice because Cassian has always made his choice and it was long before that day. But it's always ended the same way, whatever she did, whatever she does: they died there on Scarif. She remembers. 

Slowly, she started to remember earlier, but that didn't make it easy; it didn't even make it easier, it just made it worse somehow. The first few times, she tried to reason with the team - she should've known better because she knows how dumb _we're all going to die_ must have sounded when they'd all gone in knowing they likely weren't coming back. Next, she tried to tell them what was happening: Cassian ignored her; Bodhi smiled at her like he thought she'd flipped her lid and he didn't know what else to do but smile; Chirrut told her _the Force works in ways we can't comprehend_ like that meant anything at all. 

The sixth or seventh or maybe seventeenth time she tried to make them understand, it was K-2SO that changed her mind. "Does that mean our mission is not important?" he asked, and Jyn winced. The problem was, she knew it _was_ important. She stopped trying to convince them after that. She knew just how futile it would be. She'd tried so many times already.

She remembered earlier and earlier. The last few moments turned into the last few hours, the last day, the last three days. Suddenly, it would click inside her head and she knew what to do and how and when, the exact way they had to move so the blasters wouldn't hit them, the place they had to be in space so the ship wouldn't be shot down. No one's ever asked how she knows. Somehow, it's never seemed to cross their minds. 

For the longest time - though who knows how long that was - she didn't even think to question why what was happening happened. Somehow it seemed like just another messed up part of her messed up life, that somehow she always ended up back there on Scarif. She tried not to. She tried taking off in a Rebel ship and heading for the far end of the galaxy, thinking maybe if she hid in some dank cantina she could live out the rest of her life listening to a third-rate jizz band and pretending none of this had ever happened. She never made it far. All paths led back to Scarif, one way or another. She never managed to save her own life, let alone anyone else's. 

For the longest time - though who knows how long that was - she didn't question why it was happening: it just happened. But then she started to wonder. Was there _anything_ she could change? She knew she was living the same few days over and over, but what was the point if she couldn't _change anything_? She aimed her blaster at Bodhi, at the pilot's stick by the shield gate, but when she pulled the trigger it misfired. She aimed her blaster at Cassian in the Rebel hangar, but when she pulled the trigger she completely missed. Eventually, she gave up trying. She let herself get swept along, time after time, and each time she remembered just a fraction further back. She remembered earlier. There were more things she could try to change, with time.

She started seeing her father die on Eadu. She knew she'd been there before and she knew she'd be there again and she hated it, every time, but she couldn't change it at all. She remembered too late in the start, on the ship afterwards, on the surface once he was already dead and she couldn't even see his face when she turned back as they headed away, but then there he was, eventually, on the ground, dead at first and then she was further back and he was dying instead. She did everything she could. She tried to stop Cassian from leaving the ship. She tried going with him. She tried radioing the Rebels to call off the strike but it didn't work, the radio cut out or they just plain wouldn't listen. Nothing changed what happened.

She tried sneaking out and heading up there and she couldn't stop it, either. The best she could do was get there too late and she can't remember how many times she's screamed and screamed and screamed until her voice just cut out on her. She just needed a little more time. Five minutes. Maybe _two_ would do. The best she could do was fifty seconds; the best she could do was skidding to her knees on the shot-up platform and her father was there, already dying, but he saw her. He saw her and he smiled. And eventually, what happened wasn't always what happened.

"It's me, dad," she said. "It's Jyn." And he nodded as best he could as he reached out for her hand. She took it. His fingers were slick with blood, but she'd seen a whole lot worse. She guesses she's _done_ worse.

"I'm sorry, dad, I can't save you," she said. "I've tried. I've really tried." 

He smiled like it didn't even hurt him, like he wasn't even dying again. _Again_. And he said something but she couldn't hear it, the first ten times she couldn't hear so the eleventh she brought a voice recorder with her when she ran out of the ship. She listened back, after, when everyone else was frowning at her in the back of the ship like she'd lost her mind, and she figured maybe somewhere along the way she had. 

"How many times?" he asked, when she turned up the volume. _How many times?_

"Dad, what did you do?" she said, the twelfth time, maybe, maybe the twentieth, maybe the hundredth: time had stopped meaning much at all. 

"I finished the prototype when you were six years old," he said. 

"I don't understand." 

His eyes unfocused. "Don't try to save me, Jyn," he said. "Please just save yourself." 

Jyn has lived that day a thousand times or maybe more. She's been on her knees on that platform with her father a thousand times. In the start, she thought he was wrong because how could she not try to save him? She tried. As she remembered further back, she tried every way she could think of: she tried directing Cassian straight to Eadu when he first came for her, but he wouldn't deviate; she tried getting there herself, tried disguising herself, tried piloting a ship once she'd learned how to do it, tried everything. She got further back and she tried earlier and earlier, and sometimes she even got close, but all paths still led to Galen Erso's death. All paths still led to Scarif. 

In the end, she thought maybe he was right - maybe she couldn't save him. Maybe she could get away, find a new place, find a new life, and maybe she could save herself even if she couldn't save him. She tried, but in the end Cassian always found her. In the end, she held her father's hand while he died in the dark and then they went to Scarif. 

For the longest time - though who knows how long that was - she didn't question why it was happening. She thought maybe her dad had wanted her to live and so he'd made something, something he maybe shouldn't have, and one day she'd find the right thing she could change so she wouldn't end up right back there on Scarif. She tried everything she could think of, but she just got swept along; she learned science when she could, the earlier she went, to try to understand what her dad had done, but she's never understood it. She's smart, she thinks, but she's not smart the way her father is, or was, because he's dead and he's not or maybe he's both. 

For the longest time, she thought she knew what he meant, but she remembers earlier and earlier. She's fourteen years old when she remembers now. She's lived lifetimes. She never saves herself. 

"Please just save yourself," he says, and she says, " _How_?" but he's dead again before he can answer. 

For the longest time, she thought she knew what he meant when he said _save yourself_ , but she always dies on Scarif. The ending never changes. 

She stands. His blood is on her hands and on her clothes and she's standing in it and at some point it stopped turning her stomach quite the way it should. Time does that sometimes, she thinks. It dulls things, if you let it, though other things stay just as sharp.

She always dies on Scarif. The ending never changes, but one day she'll be six years old again and he'll have the prototype there in his hands, the thing he made for her before he knew what it would really mean. She thinks maybe she loves him for this thing he tried to do but one day she'll be six years old and maybe she can stop him doing it. Maybe the next time she's on Scarif after, it'll be the last.

And maybe then she'll have saved herself.


End file.
